Recognizing that these dark web ideas are conservative might also help clear up space for people on the left of center who might share some criticisms of political correctness or campus activism without indulging the right-wing implications of these ideas. Many people across the political spectrum recognize that political correctness and its variants are not meaningless terms. It is no surprise that college students often experiment with activist projects that push the boundaries of liberal norms, and the members of the intellectual dark web are not the only people to have worried about the implications of some student rhetoric.

In the 1990s, left and progressive thinkers including Richard Rorty, Cornel West, and Edward Said made clear their reservations about certain activist tactics, and articulated positions in line with the same universalist values neoconservatives claimed as their own. Today, magazines like Current Affairs dedicate much of their content to debunking the claims of dark web figures while also addressing the limited effectiveness of “social justice warrior” politics. Treating the beliefs of the dark web as politically conservative views, rather than a sort of transpolitical meta-position — that is to say one critique of political correctness among others, albeit an extreme one — could do much to bring these sorts of left alternatives into the public debate.